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THE CASTLE DOCTRINE INVADES METAL GEAR SOLID 5

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Setting the dress code issues aside, this teaser for MGS 5 reminded
me about how I had recently started looking forward to Phantom Pain.

Don’t get me wrong, the Microsoft E3 opening trailer did a
hell of a lot for me, but mixed in with all the other next gen talk, it got
muddled in the white noise of high profile games.

But after seeing the multiplayer trailer at Gamescom, it
cemented its spot on my must play list.

Metal Gear Solid experimented with multiplayer before,
notably with MGS 4 and Peacewaker. Both had their following, but I didn’t have
a PSP, and MGS 4 didn’t really interest me as Call of Duty 4 still had me
hooked.

Phantom Pain creates an interesting synergy between single
player and multiplayer, a trending cross-pollination that we’re seeing a lot of
now a days. Most items that aren’t nailed down to the ground can be fultoned to
your Mother Base. Like Peacewalker, gathering resources is important, and in
this case, it contributes to building up your military establishment.

This is where The Castle Doctorine comparison comes in.

Mother Base is home to Phantom Pain’s multiplayer, in which
you will build up your security to ensure that other players don’t invade it
and steal your shit, while you invade other players’ Mother Bases and try to
steal their shit.

What’s so perfect about the idea of Phantom Pain's (I just
like the sound of “Phantom Pain”) is that it avoids the risk of designing a
crappy, and often in a better case scenario, an uninviting multiplayer mode
while playing to its strengths as a stealth action game. Even though you’re
competing with others, you’re not engaging in direct combat where with MGS 5’s
controls, can be frustrating and unoriginal. You’re instead navigating
your way past AI and automated equipment set up by other players.

The idea of yoinkng freight, gun men, and other inanimate
objects by lifting them into the sky give Metal Gear an all new identity, and could arguably be one of
the best “theif” games in several years.